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The first organization in the U.S. for South Asian victims of family violence, Manavi Inc., was established in 1985 in New Jersey and, since its inception, it has established various programs to respond to the needs of South Asian women in crises. We work with women who speak various languages, come from various class backgrounds, wear dif-ferent clothes, eat different food, and observe different religions. In our home countries, these differences often lead to political clashes and collective hostilities. As a group, therefore, we have had to negotiate those differences and animosi-ties in order to reach a common ground without ignoring these factors. These differences were not easy to resolve and often rekindled historical conflicts. However, we were resolved not to frac-ture the organization on ethnic/religious lines and seek out those commonalities that tie us together. We found that not only our experiences of violence within the family but also many other beliefs and viewpoints helped to construct this common ground for us.

AMBIGUITY OF RELIGION

One of the most important issues we have had to deal with is that of religion. Although the women who ask for our assistance have the com-mon experience of being victimized by intimate people in their lives, they are not a monolithic group; they can be Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists, Jains, Zoroastrians, and Muslims. Once we started to work in our communi-ties, we realized quickly that although our assistance and approach were secu-lar, the women we were working with brought their religious beliefs with them. Frequently, this belief gave them the strength and courage they needed to overcome adversities and heal; but just as often, religion became an impediment to their liberation. Whatever the case might be, we could not ignore religion as an important part of women’s lives. We understood that if we do not take each woman’s religion into account, we could not hope to provide culturally sensitive services, assist in their recovery from violence, and could not hope to fundamentally change the circumstances of their oppression.

When battered women sought our assistance, they often resisted any inter-vention, stating that according to their religion they were supposed to tolerate and suffer at the hands of their hus-bands and other family members, and not make any effort to end or escape abuse. Most of them felt they were help-lessly trapped but change would destroy a core value in their lives. To counter these arguments, I re-studied Hinduism and Islam and other religions to really understand what they said about women and suffering. I found that in almost all religions, there are parts that empower women and others that disenfranchise them. Unfortunately, the disempower-ing parts are popularized as culture and given authenticity while the empower-ing parts and forgotten or minimized. As an intervention strategy, I had to point this ambiguity out to women and challenge them to think about why this was so and for whose benefit. 

We also realized that in Manavi the best we could do was to make room for all religions, to provide space for religious practices and create an environment that is non-threatening and supportive of each observant woman. Fortunately, we have been successful at this. Often, women of different religions reside in our shelter and observe their day-to-day religious rituals, celebrations, and dietary practices side by side.

 

COVERING UP DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

I realize, however, that this is not enough. We have to prepare our com-munity and next generations to view religion and women’s rights as compat-ible. In our community conventions and conferences we showcase our culture by presenting dance, songs, art, etc., but we do not showcase women’s activism or resistance to oppression. So our children grow up assuming women’s subjugation is a part of our cultures. We need to challenge our communities to focus on the empowering parts of our history and religion. And this is not an easy task.

In the mid 1980s, when as South Asian anti-domestic violence activists, we organized to safeguard women, the mainstream of the diaspora community denied the very existence of women’s abuse. It was particularly disinclined to acknowledge domestic violence, based on four commonly held beliefs: (1) the class-based assumption that education and affluence protect against intimate violence; (2) the concept of unbreachable
--family privacy; (3) the shame associated with abuse perpetrated by intimates; and (4) the pressure to maintain the image of an impeccable immigrant group (read: model minority). When violence within the family occurred, South Asians were either oblivious to it or asserted that it was an anomaly perpetrated by a few “sick” individuals and therefore, deserving of little serious attention. When an abused woman took the bold step to speak about her experiences and, at times, leave her abusive situation, the community often vigorously dissuaded her by stating that she was destroying “our” culture and faith. Many of us who dared to argue against this interpretation were considered to have lost all touch with our “real” backgrounds and religions. We were dubbed “godless” Western feminists.

In the West, religion and women’s movements have had sharp differences regarding their approaches to defin­ing and dealing with intimate violence. Although both groups agree on a wom­an’s right to live in safety in her family, they tend to diverge around the method of achieving it. Furthermore, they dif­fer on the priority allocated to women’s safety versus the integrity of marriage.

Feminist perspectives on domestic violence have connected violence against women with their secondary status in patriarchal societies and family structures. The focus of contemporary anti-domestic violence work has been on the empow-erment of women and social change towards gender equality. Although most religious institutions readily share in women’s movements’ concerns regard-ing battered women’s safety, they have vigorously differed on the option of dis-solution of marriage as a viable solution to intimate violence. Instead of divorce, religious institutions have generally promoted change in the conjugal relationship and perpetrators’ hearts (assuming that behavior will follow) to ensure women’s safety and well being.

Feminist efforts for social change, thus, have not always been acceptable to religious traditions. Despite such fun­damental differences, in recent years both religious institutions and battered women’s movements are increasingly recognizing the need for collaboration in order to facilitate the right of women to live free of domestic violence. However, in the immigrant communities there are added nuances to this position.

CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY

In the South Asian American com-munity, leaders have often claimed that violence against women occurs because the individuals have moved away from their religious teachings and “authentic” life. That is, religion would act as a protective factor against abuse within the family.

In an attempt to explore this under­standing, a friend and I conducted a cross-cultural study to test the con­cept that religion provides protection against the abuse of women in the fam­ily. We targeted the Jain community since this is a community that is based on the principle of active nonviolence – that is, nonviolence in thoughts, spoken words, and action. Jainism’s fundamental principle is nonviolence in every aspect of life and towards every life form. Jainism has zero tolerance for violence and requires all Jains to renounce aggression unilaterally.

We recruited participants in New Jersey, U.S., and Punjab, India. The method was to give the participants a short hypothetical situation where the wife behaves badly in public. We asked respondents for their opinions on how the husband should treat this trans-gression. We gave them four alterna-tives, three of which were overtly violent actions on the part of the husband to punish his wife.

Our findings showed that in the Jain community in India, 45.9 % supported and justified the abusive conduct of the husband toward his wife (45.5 % men and 46.2 women). Among the Jains in the U.S., 36.1 % supported the husband’s use of violence toward his wife (51.5 % men and 17.9 % women). This difference between the genders was statistically significant at an extremely high level.

The first lesson to be learnt here is that religion, however much it sanc-tions nonviolence and requires strict adherence to peaceable ethics, does not inoculate individuals against woman-abuse. Neither does it add protection to women’s lives. Although no reli-gion directly encourages men to abuse women, Jainism takes an active stand against all kinds of violence, thereby violence against women.

Even though the participants declared overwhelming support for non­violence as a religious code, they found a husband’s harsh treatment of his recal­citrant wife appropriate. Furthermore, men showed much stronger approval of violent responses towards a transgressing spouse than women. Such gendered dif­ferences in response and the divergence between belief and behavior indicate that cultural nuances and patriarchal entitlements, rather than religious edicts, might be influencing the treatment of women among Jains.

These results indicate that it may be necessary to break some myths in the immigrant religious communities. Intrinsic beliefs do not necessarily trans-late into the provision of protection for women. The acceptance of abuse against women has much deeper roots in the worldviews and lived cultures of communities. It is, therefore, impor-tant to analyze critically the individual, institutional, and cultural grounds of a community to understand, challenge, and deconstruct the nourishment it pro-vides to domestic violence. To eradicate violence against women, we require our religious communities to come forward and collaborate across religions and with secular organizations to announce and overtly support a single strong message of nonviolence.

Shamita Das Dasgupta is the founder of Manavi, the first organization in the United States for South Asian victims of family violence.